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"Why, you fool," cried Toonie, "a moment ago it was! But now you have gone and let go your mouthful of silence!" "To be sure, to be sure so I have!" answered the old man sadly; and turning about, he disappeared among the bushes. As for Toonie, he went on right over the top of Drundle Head, keeping his eyes well to the right; but never a fairy did he see.
"Good evening, your reverence," cried Toonie, and flourished off his cap, so that out fell his capful of moonshine. And though he went on all the way up over the top of Drundle Head, never a fairy did he spy; for he forgot that, in passing what he supposed to be the priest, he had let go both his mouthful of silence and his capful of moonshine.
But folk still called him Little Toonie, because his head was so full of moonshine; and his mother, finding he was no good to her, sold him to the farmer, by whom, since he had no wits for anything better, he was set to pull at waggon and plough just as if he were a cart-horse; and, indeed, he was almost as strong as one.
The next night, when he was coming to the ascent of the hill, he saw a little elderly man wandering uncertainly over the ground ahead of him; and he too seemed to have his hands full of courage and his cap full of moonshine. As Toonie drew near, the other turned about and said to him, "Can you tell me, neighbour, if this be the way to the fairies?"
Toonie could not understand what the old fellow meant, and he could not speak to him. In the open moonlight ahead little people were all agog; bright dewdrops were shivering down like rain, where flying feet alighted shot from bent grass-blades like arrows from a drawn bow. Tight, panting little bodies, of which one could count the ribs, and faces flushed with fiery green blood, sprang everywhere.
"I am called Little Toonie," said he, "the son of old Toonie that was lost." "Why, as I live and remember," cried the little elderly man, "old Toonie was me!" Then he threw himself grovelling at his son's feet, and began crying: "Oh, be quick and take me away! Make them give me up to you: ask to have me!
But at Toonie's coming one cried up shriller than a bat; and at once rippling burrows went this way and that in the long grass, and stillness followed after. The poor, dangling old man, whom Toonie was still carrying, wriggled and whined miserably, crying, "Come back, masters, for it is no use this one sees you! He has got past me and all my poor skill to stop him.
The little elderly man slipped from his side, disappearing suddenly among the bushes, and Toonie went on alone. So presently he was more than halfway up the ascent, and could see along the foot-track of the thicket the silver moonlight lying out over the open ahead.
He had nearly reached to the top of Drundle Head, when up from the ground sprang the same little elderly man of the evening before, and began beating him across the face with a hazel wand. And at that Toonie threw up both hands and let go his courage, and turned and tried to run down the hill. When her husband did not return, Toonie's wife became a kind of a widow.
After a time Little Toonie began to grow big, as is the way with children, and at last he became bigger than ever old Toonie had been.
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